B72 THE OCEAN. + : 
As though they watch’d the shell-fish slowly gliding 
O’er sunken rocks, or climbing trees of coral. 
On indefatigable wing upheld, 
Breath, pulse, exist seem’d suspended in them: 
They were as pictures painted on the sky; 
Till, suddenly, aslant, away they shot, 
Like meteors changed from stars to gleams of lightning, 
And struck upon the deep; where, in wild play, 
Their quarry flounder’d, unsuspecting harm ; 
With terrible voracity, they plunged 
Their heads among th’ affrighted shoals, and beat 
A tempest on the surges, with their wings, 
Till flashing clouds of foam and spray conceal’d them. 
Nimbly they seized and secreted their prey, 
Alive and wriggling in the elastic net, 
Which Nature hung beneath their grasping beaks ; 
Till swoll’n with captures, the unwieldy burthen 
Clogg’d their slow flight, as heavily to land 
These mighty hunters of the deep return’d.' 
There on the cragged cliffs they perch’d at ease, 
Gorging their hapless victims one by one; 
Then, full and weary, side by side they slept, 
Till evening roused them to the chase again.” 
I have reserved till the last of these gleanings from 
the Ocean, one of the most curious of its phenomena, 
and one that, while it vividly strikes the fancy of the 
voyager when he beholds it for the first time, fails 
not to maintain its power to interest after years of 
observation have made it familiar. I have reserved it 
until the last, because it is peculiar to no sea, but 
common to all, being observable in the frozen ocean 
of either pole, and under the burning line; in the 
Atlantic and in the Pacific. Still there seem to be 
greater intensity and brilliance in the display of the 
phenomenon in the tropical seas than in colder 
climates. No sooner has night descended over the 
